By: Stephanie March

By: Jason DeRusha

Dunzo!: Gray House to close on July 31 ... (But Score One for Nordeast?)

Well, that’s too bad. I just got off the phone with Ian Gray of The Gray House—recently reviewed as the best $20 prix fixe in town—and he tells me that he has decided not to renew the lease for the restaurant, and so July 31 will be their very last day.

What happened? Basically, he got divorced and his ex-father-in-law was his major investor, and now wants his money back. “The prix fixe is doing phenomenally,” sighed Gray, “and we have one more meeting with my ex-father-in-law in June, but he wants his money back, which is very reasonable, absolutely understandable, and that’s just how it is here, a lot of personal stuff is mixed in with the restaurant, and it makes sense to streamline and start fresh, given all the personal stuff.” So, what next?

Gray tells me he, his sous chef Jessica Knettel, and his front of house manager Kiri Anderson are looking at a new space in northeast Minneapolis, and hope to portage The Gray House sensibility—scrupulously local, great beer, lotta goats—to Nordeast, which they feel has the potential to be as restaurant-saturated as southwest Minneapolis has gotten lately.

I feel like this is the part of the story when St. Paul’s Mayor Chris Coleman swoops in with a team of operatives and offers this scrappy band of restaurauteurs a section of St. Paul’s endless expanse of abandoned brewery? But either which way, it was a good run.